


dandelion heart

by lisettedelapin



Category: Free!
Genre: Flowers, M/M, pre-eternal summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 21:00:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2825963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisettedelapin/pseuds/lisettedelapin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“It’s fitting,” Rin says, after a while and by God, he hopes he doesn’t end up talking complete rubbish but the conversation is hanging all weirdly between them and he needs to try and say something. He swallows thickly. “You working at a flower shop, I mean. It’s fitting, somehow. I mean you’ve always been the type to make others grow.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	dandelion heart

**Author's Note:**

> for makorin week's day 1 prompt: flowers!
> 
> (this is so late and i am so sorry)

 “I didn’t know you worked at a flower shop.”

Makoto’s hand falters around his rolling pin, his breath falling in a surprised little sound as he turns to face Rin. When he runs a hand through his hair, he leaves a streak of white and Rin doesn’t think twice about reaching out to dust it away.

“Flour in your hair,” Rin says, by means of explanation; though he can’t quite decide if such an innocent gesture really warrants an explanation. He huffs now, because he certainly wouldn’t be questioning it if Makoto hadn’t jumped under the touch, if his nose wasn’t flushed pink. Then again, there are a lot of things he wouldn’t be questioning if only Makoto weren’t a lot of things to begin with.

“Rin? You okay?” Makoto asks, once his blush has subsided.

Rin takes a moment before, finally, he decides that no, he is not okay. Because Tachibana Makoto has lovely hands. And this fact would be meaningless except last week, Rin saw him tightening his apron through the glass of a flower shop window. The problem lies in that instead of letting the rush of recognition pass and walking in to say hello, Rin had stayed there to watch Makoto roll cut stems between his fingers, letting them fall to his cupped palms.

Rin had stood rooted to the spot like one of the trillions of pot plants lining the inside of the store. And no, nothing is okay because he’d stayed for at least three minutes to (re)establish that _wow_ , Tachibana Makoto has lovely hands.

Unfortunately, when Rin thinks to articulate this, his thoughts come not so much in words…but rather an affronted sounding groan. He’s got one hand fluttering weakly by his chest before he exhales and tries again

Makoto raises an eyebrow, and Rin feels himself flush under the scrutiny.

“F-fine, I’m fine,” he manages, hating how clumsy his tongue feels around the words.

Makoto doesn’t look completely convinced. Nonetheless, he graces Rin with a weak smile and turns back to the counter to resume his attempt at rolling out the perfect piecrust.

“It’s fitting,” Rin says, after a while and by God, he hopes he doesn’t end up talking complete rubbish but the conversation is hanging all weirdly between them and he needs to try and say something. He swallows thickly. “You working at a flower shop, I mean. It’s fitting, somehow. I mean you’ve always been the type to make others grow.”

And _that_ , if anything, is too far away from being trash. It’s too earnest for Rin and on their way out, the words resonate hot in his chest and on his tongue from just how much he means them. The awe that catches in his throat catches him right off-guard, just like everything seems to do these days. His palms are beginning to sweat so he folds his arms and scuffs one slipper against the surface of Makoto’s kitchen tiles; clearing his throat and tacking on a super suave “you know, shit like that…” to his earlier statement.

It’s too late, though. His attempt at making this something seemingly casual is useless because Makoto is staring, his mouth slightly agape before he swallows and breaks out in a wide, stretching smile. It’s the sort that rounds his cheeks; lights him up like he’s hiding fucking gold deposits or something. And Rin wonders if his ribcage has been a house all along because his heart is slamming up against it like cabin fever against a locked door. It pounds at the sight of the sunshine that seeps from Makoto’s half-moon smile, which is an embarrassing thought that doesn't even make sense, except it does because what about Makoto doing _that_ ) makes sense? Rin wants to lay a hand over his chest because he gets it – he’s never understood his heart so well, never felt the urge to know another’s smile by all five senses this strongly.  
  
“Rin…”

He hates the way Makoto trails off, hates the surprise that laces his voice. “It’s true,” Rin says; with zero embarrassment, with a natural logicality so cool that Ryugazaki might pat him on the back. Rin wonders how he might board every part of Makoto that’s vulnerable to accepting self-doubt.

“Thank you,” Makoto says, though his mouth doesn’t quite close, as if there’s more he wants to say.

“Plus, you always used to volunteer for garden duty.”  
  
Makoto’s breezy laugh sweeps the corners of Rin’s mouth up with it. “I can’t believe you remember that.” 

Rin scoffs. “Of course I remember.” And then his gut clenches when he realises that he’s given his friends all the reason to think he’s been willfully forgetting everything he can about them. His eyes feel too hot to talk about that right now but he promises himself that another day he will make sure Makoto knows that he used to stand in front of the tide and imagine bartering love with the wind.

For now, he gulps; begs the lump in his throat to melt and snatches the rolling pin from out Makoto’s hand so he can steer the conversation elsewhere. “Your technique needs work,” he mutters, pushing Makoto to the side. “If you want to make a piecrust good and round you have to work from the centre.”

“How are you so good at that?” Makoto asks, his eyes wide.

“My little sister and I bake sometimes...” Rin pauses to brush his fringe out of his eyes with the back of his hand before peering up at Makoto. “Why do you look so pleased?”

Makoto straightens up, startled to find Rin watching him. “N-No reason. That’s just…kind of cute.”

Rin grunts, returning to the task at hand so he doesn’t have to look at Makoto catching sight of his flushed cheeks. “It’s more like I do all the work and she sneaks tastes between telling me I’m doing everything wrong.”  He hears Makoto laugh again, chews his lip at the sound and can’t decide if it makes the air feel lighter or so much thicker.

He doesn’t look up until he hears Makoto set down a bowl to his side. Rin knows it’s full of blueberries by the smell but when he glances over at the contents he still can’t hold back a smile. “Didn’t know you liked blueberries,” he says, a little bewildered by just how affected he feels by something as menial as Makoto’s fruit preferences.

Makoto shakes his head. “It’s for Rei. I feel like he never gets first choice when we all eat together.”

Rin’s smile loses a hint of zeal, but he nods nonetheless. “Actually, that makes total sense. Blueberries seem like something he’d like.”

“He wants to meet you properly, you know? He’s genuinely happy you swam the relay with us. Nagisa and Haru, too. We all really want you to come with us tomorrow.”

Rin curses the tremble of his hands over the rolling pin; when he looks up to meet Makoto’s gaze, he expects it to be polite. Instead, he finds earnestness too heavy for any left over scaffolding in his chest to bear. He’d known Makoto had called him over to help bake a pie for a picnic tomorrow; he’d thought the request weird and oddly specific at the time but Makoto had told Rin that he’d missed Rin’s company. He’d asked with a slight tremor in his voice, when it should’ve been the other way round; when this was a gesture infinitely more beneficial to Rin than to Makoto. Briefly, Rin had wondered if this picnic was something he’d be invited to as well, but more than anything, he’d hated that before he destroyed everything, there’d be no question about whether or not he’d go with everyone. The fresh wave of guilt that thought inspired had him scrambling to find an end for the call, knowing that there was zero chance of him asking.

“Sorry, I didn’t really invite you properly or anything…I just thought it would be a given.” Makoto smiles apologetically and Rin wants to tell him _no, no, no_ because if Makoto keeps giving, keeps apologising; where does that leave Rin?

“I don’t—you don’t…” Rin grits his teeth, letting go of the rolling pin so he can dig his fingernails in his palms as he angles his body towards Makoto’s. “How are you still like this?”  
  
Makoto frowns. “Still like what?”  
  
“Instant forgiveness, open arms. All that. How?”

Makoto shakes his head and his voice is sad when he speaks. “We’re friends. We always thought of you as a friend. Honestly, we're kind of waiting for you to welcome yourself back.”

The breath stops short in Rin’s chest. “Weren’t you upset? I pretty much ignored you and Nagisa that one night.”

“It was alright.” Makoto bites his lip, before he manages to turn the hint of a smile Rin’s way. “Perhaps I just have trouble really letting go. Maybe that’s why it seems like I’m so good at helping things—what was it?”

Rin breathes out a laugh, low and short from between his teeth. But it feels good when he elbows Makoto in the side. “Bloom and grow, yeah yeah.”

Makoto is open arms, a careful heart. Makoto carries at least one thousand thread-bound hopes; one for every person he has ever met. One day Rin will tell him how grateful he is for the tug of that string. At times like this it makes it so much easier for him not to slip away again.

When Makoto speaks again, his smile is the one that makes Rin feel like he’s swallowing cool air. “We have irises in the shop that are the exact same shade as these blueberries,” he says.

Rin stares at the blueberries, imagines Makoto smiling at a shipment of irises, and resolves to see just how much Ryugazaki loves this goddamn pie with his own eyes at the picnic tomorrow.

“But if we're talking fruit, I'm more a fan of honeydew, to be honest.” Makoto muses with a grin.

  
~

  
Makoto is aware of what people say.  He’s heard the offhand remarks of his unnatural patience, constant placidity, unwavering benevolence; laughed off the questioning, the occasional ‘ _Oh, Saint Tachibana._ ’

He’d agree that he is gentle, patient, _nice._ He doesn’t quite know how to want anything but the best for those around him. But it’s not that negative emotions don’t touch him, things don’t roll off him and leave him as peaceful as he might seem. He knows what it feels like for ire to curl his fingers tight into his palms. He guesses that what sets him apart is that he doesn’t know how to hold on to anger. As instinctive as the way he tucks Ren and Ran into bed, Makoto will always fear the crescent shaped marks his nails leave in the flesh of his hands. Even Haru’s parents, who send postcards and kiss their son’s forehead between trips like a duty to be checked off on a list, only inspire brief waves of sharp irritation. And that irritation cools into disappointment, a plea for Haru to be okay.

He supposes maybe that’s a good thing; no one will ever reach for his heart and get frostbite, at least.

Then he thinks again and realises he’s made it difficult for anyone to reach for his heart at all.

It’s not that Makoto doesn’t love and it’s not that he isn’t loved in turn; it’s just that he has become a master of compressing and guarding any internal unrest. He can’t hold onto anger because always, it unfurls into doubt. Sure, doubt might sink his chest but sinking is better than rising up and out and Makoto knows just how to make people float so easily on his smiles, they won’t even bother to look down.

The night Haru, Nagisa and Makoto run into Rin at the Iwatobi Swim Club, he wonders if maybe it’d be easier to feel angry.

Rin is beautiful. He’s got the same elegant brows Makoto knows, the same carmine hair brushing the nape of his neck. It’s all so similar to Makoto’s memories that for a second, he wonders if he is dreaming.

That same theory will occur to Haru at school the next day; but reality dawns harsh and absolute on Makoto much faster. He knows because Rin bares the points of his teeth not in a grin but in a sneer. And even now, Makoto remembers Rin’s smile all too well. He used to be positive that the Earth shivered at the sight; shifted slightly to accommodate for when Rin would inevitably turn the planet inside out. It was impossible to feel anything but complete certainty when Rin smiled. It wasn’t always clear what that certainty was of but it was something _,_ nonetheless.  

Makoto would never imagine that, could never even dream up Rin lacking that inexplicable _something_.

Now, Rin addresses only Haru when he speaks, his voice is laced with a hint of gravel – whether by emotion, the added years or some combination of the two, Makoto cannot be sure.

In the dilapidated hallways of the Iwatobi swimming club, where Rin used to pour life into everything with all the ease of cracking an egg, Makoto finds himself speechless for the wrong reasons. He can’t read the situation; can only stare at this boy who is Rin, but not as Makoto knows him. He shivers when he looks at Rin’s eyes and he realises that it’s not that Rin is a stranger; somewhere along the way, the life has just seeped out of him. If Makoto tried to give him words they’d probably seep right out too.

Does Australia hold him now?

The dismissal stings, it makes Makoto want the space he’s taking up to diminish, so that Rin’s lack of warmth, of _anything,_ can’t reach him and crawl across his skin in the way it is right now. His chest tightens when he shifts his weight; the dark is not enough, not when he can’t shake the feeling that now all that’s left is eggshells underfoot.

Later on, when Makoto stands at the doorstep to his house, the feeling of treading on something sacred having followed him there, he finally feels the rush of heat swallow his heart, clog his throat. He is furious at Rin for not having said a word – for growing up and giving them nothing all these years. And then for having the nerve to stand in the place where Makoto remembers him the most, as if to close Makoto’s hands around the moments he’d treasured, and force him to squeeze.

It is then that he notices a deep red potted rose – his mother must’ve bought it recently – and he feels the air around him still.  He breathes through his nose and out his mouth, clenches and unclenches his fists before he leans down to the single bloom. He can’t explain the urge he feels to tear it apart; disassemble it and spread it out across his palms so he can see everything, find exactly what holds it together so he can curse it for not being stronger.

But he plucks one petal and his fingers begin to tremble so hard, he has to draw his hand back and shove it deep into his pocket.

His breath comes tremulous and the rose still looks immaculate but now all Makoto can do is feel horrible for the single petal lying between his feet and the pot. He can’t place it back; it’ll only fall away again, just as the heat now falls away from his chest. In its wake there is only worry and the greatest regret.

 

~

 

Rin walks past the flower shop three times in the next week. Specifically, he holds his breath as he peeks inside, before ducking straight past the window in what he hopes is a completely nonchalant manner.

Once, he thinks Makoto catches sight of his hair. He doesn’t stick around to find out; instead pretending he’s going for a jog and whipping past the store. He’s not creeping, honestly. He intends to go in every time, but he can’t bring himself to cross the threshold without an excuse.

By Sunday, he’s talked himself up in front of the mirror and spent an entire train ride staring resolutely forwards. He has his excuse lined up and he’s going to visit Makoto because surely if he’s spent so much time thinking about it, it’s a sign that he should do it.

And of course, when Rin opens the door, the jingle of the store bells shaking his heartbeat, Makoto lifts his head, does a double take and completely lights up.

“ _Rin?_ What are you doing all the way out here?” He says, once Rin has made his way over.

Rin has his cover story all ready; he wanted to visit his mum and he remembered the shop, considered picking up carnations as a gift and thought ‘ _hey, why not?’_ Totally casual. Nothing to do with how these days, looking at Makoto’s name in his phone contacts forces Rin to smother a smile into his pillow.

Instead, what he says is: “I wanted to see you.” And wow, _wow rude,_ he never thought he wouldn’t be able to trust his own mouth like this.

He’s ready to scurry right out the shop when he notices that Makoto is bright red, his tongue darting out to wet his lips before he splutters out an, “O-oh, I see!” Then he breathes out a flustered sounding laugh and Rin can’t help but smirk, _this_ he can deal with just fine.

He rests one arm on the counter between them and leans towards Makoto in the most deliberate manner he can manage. “Why is that so surprising?”

Impossibly, Makoto’s blush seems to deepen. “No reason…just um—“ Rin watches his adam’s apple bob as he gulps. “I’m really glad to see you here.”

Rin’s eyes widen, his own face heating now and he kind of wants to scream because there’s really no way he can win with Makoto, is there?

When Makoto speaks again, the red of his cheeks has cooled considerably. “It was so great getting everyone together the other day but then we hadn’t heard from you since and um…yeah…”  
  
Rin wants to ask him to elaborate. But he doesn't, instead biting his lip and drumming his fingers against the counter. He’s immeasurably grateful for that picnic.

Nagisa had so readily looped an arm around Rin’s shoulders. He’d joked and teased and laid his head in Rin’s lap so that Rin could do nothing else but belong.  So that there was zero room for him to once question his worth or his place among everyone.

Rei had been surprising – straitlaced and logical to a fault but somehow, Rin had not been able to shake the sensation that when Rei looked at him, it was with an innate understanding of all Rin was, is and could be. He’d ached because in Rei, Rin recognised the exact same dedication he knew to hold in himself – the kind that would so often split his chest with caring _so much, too much._

And over the course of the day, Rin had relearned how to feel wonder when he looked at Haru, dainty and succinct and cool as ever. He thought he’d never again see Haru and experience the excited swell and stir of his heart, to regard challenge with a grin. But there it was again and for the first time in a long time, Rin had not wanted to be bigger in order to conquer the world, but rather for the world to be bigger so that he might stretch for it instead.

For Makoto, what Rin felt was simple. For Makoto, Rin wanted the world to be better.

He’d forgotten that needing people didn’t have to feel awful.

He swallows around the lump in his throat now, letting his gaze pass over the wealth of amaryllis placed behind Makoto before returning to the green of Makoto’s eyes and grounding himself.

“I want to go out like that again.” Rin says.

Makoto gives a small surprised hum before smiling softly and Rin thinks it’s not fair for him to sound so relieved.

 

~

Makoto doesn’t know why he can’t shake that one memory. Rin with all five tiny fingers of his tiny hand pressed to the trunk of a looming cherry tree. Makoto had thought it so odd that Rin had looked at the tree; stripped to a skeleton by the winter, and of all things, imagined swimming among fallen blossoms.

And after a moment of watching Rin peer up at the tangle of branches, the idea had even started to make total sense in Makoto’s head.

But then the breeze had swept his hair and he’d remembered that it certainly wouldn’t do to swim outdoors in such cold weather. When he voiced that concern, he couldn’t call even a fraction of Rin’s conviction to his voice.

In that way, Rin has always managed to make the romantic seem far more plausible

That romance, the ambition and the constant cataloguing of new sights – Rin would reach for all of it with an idealism so fierce it would turn all those soft, pretty thoughts into something more wild, more tangible.

He’s always been a boy of infinitudes.

And Makoto could never quite tell if his lungs felt so tight with the desire to play witness to it all or with the yearning to _be_ it all.

Now, he thinks he’s just beginning to understand. All that Rin is means so much because it is a part of Rin; maybe Makoto wants to be able to lay a hand over the universe Rin keeps at his beck and call.

The cherry trees are in full bloom and Makoto thinks that for now, he just wants to smile at Rin and see him smile back.

 

~

“Again?” Makoto asks as Rin steps into the shop. But he sounds pleased and so Rin can’t dredge up even a hint of self-consciousness.

“Don’t get cocky, I’m just here to hang out with the flowers.”

Makoto gives a mock-affronted gasp, deliberates for a while and then slowly reaches for the potted sunflower to his side so he can hold it in front of his face.

“Makoto…what are you doing?”

Makoto’s answer comes in a low, conspiratorial whisper. “Who is Makoto? I’m sorry, you're talking to a sunflower.”

Fuck. _Fuck._ Rin feels his stomach flip, his cheeks warm even as he tries to let out the most disappointed groan he can possibly muster. Makoto is making this whole crush business extremely difficult by acting cute. “How are you the captain of your team, you absolute nerd?”  
  
“No, I just told you…” Rin’s eyebrows shoot up as Makoto snickers, waving the pot from side to side. “Sunflower,” he corrects.

"Nerdflower,” Rin amends, dragging a hand down his face.

Makoto gives a low, thoughtful hum. “Would that make me eligible for hang-outs?”

At that, Rin walks right up to the counter, exasperated and very fond as he handles the pot out of Makoto’s hands and back down. Makoto is smiling, faintly flushed when Rin sees his face.

“I want to hang out with you, okay?” Rin says, and for as liberating as the words are, part of him wants to swallow them back down.

He thinks Makoto might be biting the inside of his lip to hold back his grin. “I’d like that very much.”

Something about those words, about how beautifully polite and faintly hopeful they are, sets something new ticking under Rin’s pulse. He finds himself much more aware of the stretches of quiet between them that day and it grates at him how the silence is deafening when normally he can handle it just fine. While Makoto has always been a champion of small talk, he’s also equally adept at making quiet comfortable. It’s something in his constant smile, his droopy, unassuming eyes. But for as gentle as his presence might seem, Rin knows that Makoto, whether on purpose or not, can read a situation. As kids, Rin had realised this; learning that to be with Makoto was a foolproof way to feel ease melt his shoulders. At the time, when Rin was completely unaware of how much he’d come to love their friendship, he’d seen this as something of a convenience, a stroke of good luck.

Now he just wants to know what goes on in Makoto’s head. He is so perceptive of everyone else, how perceptive is he really of himself? So accustomed to giving, but what is it that _he_ might want?

“You look deep in thought,” Makoto asks, with as little pressure as a statement like that could possibly hold.

Rin will still bite. “Do you...I’m just thinking—” He hopes the question will not not come off abrasive, because he truly means it with no edge. "Is there, like...is there anything you badly want?"

Makoto starts, his eyes widening at the words. “Ah wow, right this instant?”

That’s good enough for now. “Yeah,” Rin says.

“No,” Makoto replies after a moment’s thought. His answer comes slow, unsure, maybe. “I don’t think there’s anything.”

Rin sighs but still, he gets the impression Makoto means it. “You’d tell me, right? If there’s ever something…I wanna know.”

Makoto’s brows draw upwards for a second and then his eyes are uncharacteristically intense on Rin. “Yeah. Yes Rin, I’ll tell you.”

Rin smiles at that; the type of smile that carries the warmth he can feel spreading in his chest.

It’s almost closing time and the shop is devoid of customers when Rin makes to leave. He decides he really will visit his mother and sister today; he genuinely wants to check up on them. He’s browsing the rows and shelves and securely hung baskets of flowers when Makoto places a hand on his shoulder.

“Looking for something?” He asks.

There are so many flowers that they all kind of melt into each other and Rin can no longer pick out specifics. “Carnations. For my mum,” he says, because it’s the first flower that comes to mind.

Makoto tells him to wait at the cash register. He emerges about a minute later, placing the bouquet delicately on the counter. Rin can’t help but smile, thinking them more perfect than anything he might’ve picked out. Just as he takes the bouquet in his hands, catching the scent of faint spice from the crowded, variegated petals, Makoto sets down a bunch of closely wrapped mixed white and red camellias in front of him. Rin hadn’t even noticed he’d been holding more flowers.

“In case you wanted anything to leave for your dad,” Makoto says, biting his lip.

_Always so considerate._

Rin takes a long look at the camellias before meeting Makoto’s gaze again. His heart is full as he puts the carnations down to retrieve his wallet once more. Makoto’s hand brushes his as Rin transfers the money, and Rin sucks in a short breath from the contact.

He almost leaves like that.

Thankfully, he grinds his teeth and straightens his back instead. “Don’t you dare speak a word of this to Nagisa but…Makoto, could you come here for a moment?”

Makoto cocks his head, but he obeys nonetheless, moving from behind the counter so he's close to Rin. “Sure, what do you n—“

Before he can find it in himself to hesitate, Rin wraps his arms around Makoto. His whole body stays wired tight and terse until Makoto gets over the initial surprise and breathes out a warm, quiet chuckle, melting easily into the hug. At that, Rin exhales and pulls Makoto closer; the touch still has his heart racing and the moment feels imagined but there’s such comfort in holding and being held that Rin really doesn’t want to break the spell.

He has to though. And when they draw away from each other, Rin watches the stretch of Makoto’s smile. It’s the exact characteristic curve of his mouth that warms his eyes with the movement. Rin used to feel knots he wasn’t even aware of uncurl in his stomach at the sight of that smile; now it makes his palms sweat.

“You know, if I'd had foresight before—” Makoto pauses to laugh softly. When he speaks again he looks just as dazed as Rin feels. “I think _that_ was something I could've told you I wanted.”

Rin shakes his head. What an absolute dork. “Yeah well, like I said…no telling Nagisa. Or Haru for that matter, he’d never let me hear the end of it.”

He sighs, waits a beat and then realises what he needs to do to alleviate the stubborn weight on his chest.

“Thank you,” Rin says. And he means it so bone-deep that for a moment, he feels that the words are everything holding him together.

 

~

Makoto watches a tall customer with her hair coiled in a messy looking side bun leave the store clutching a bouquet of roses in her trembling hands. He’s trying to focus every scrap of spare luck in her direction when Rin sidles over to him.

“Hope it turns out well for her,” he says.

Makoto nods his affirmation, with a sympathetic frown in her direction. “She was very sweet, I’m sure whoever it is will be over the moon.”

Rin clicks his tongue against his teeth. “Yeah, but it has to be pretty terrifying to lay yourself out like that.”

“Mmm, I certainly hope it’s not dragged out too long for her.”

A moment passes before Makoto hears Rin clear his throat.

“Hey, if you were to….you know ah…confess to someone, which flowers do you think you’d pick?”

That certainly has Makoto’s heart rate spiking. He looks at Rin to find him blushing slightly, and tries desperately to smile away the dread that’s weighing down his heart.

“It would depend on the person,” he says, carefully. He hopes Rin can’t tell that he’s scanning his mental lexicon for every name they both know.

It hits him like he’s just landed at the bottom of a well. _Haru_. Of course, of course who else could it be?

Makoto hates how swiftly the thought sinks his stomach. These are two of the people he cares about the absolute most in the world; it’s not right to allow his support for them to catch and snag on any of his own feelings.

But he needs to know for sure. “Is it Haru? You can tell me.” He’s relieved at how his voice comes so much steadier than what he feels.

Rin blanches. “ _No,_ ” he hisses. “Oh my god, that was…direct.”

The breath Makoto releases feels so heavy he wonders why he doesn’t float off the ground afterwards. He wants to stick a hand to his chest, tell it to calm down; they’re safe for another day, at least. “I-I mean I just thought, you know because Haru is Haru and you’re…you…”

Rin lets out a ragged sounding sigh. “Yeah, yeah no…that makes sense. For a while, I could see it, like, you know, we might sort of fall into something…but Haru, he’s—“

“Extraordinary.” Makoto says, blushing not a moment after for having cut Rin off.

But Rin gets it, only laughing softly at the word. “Yeah. Yeah, Haru is extraordinary. I don’t know what I’d do without him but it’s just not like… _that._ ” He finishes with a shrug.

Makoto nods a little overzealously. “Okay, okay yeah. Yeah, I get that.”

He hears Rin exhale then, sees him wringing his hands before tentatively, he meets Makoto’s eyes.

“So, for you…Haru, yeah?”

Makoto’s already so strung out by this conversation he can’t manage a reaction beyond a tiny, helpless laugh. “I guess it’s the same sort of situation as you. It could make sense and for some time I genuinely thought I might...that I wanted that sort of relationship with him but—“ He stops to shake his head, feeling oddly shy. “For as much as I love Haru and for as much sense as it _should_ make, if I really imagine being with him romantically it just seems odd.”

He thinks of Haru now and it brings a fond smile to his lips. It might be nice to have some time with just the three of them.

“Y’know, all this time you’ve had that whole childhood friends with strange telepathic capabilities thing going on; I couldn’t help but wonder.”

“Yeah, it stops at that,” Makoto says with a smile. He wonders how he might be able to explain to Rin just how much he treasures both of them; how their bonds are so completely different that he wants to thank them for teaching Makoto how to be _more_.

He loves Haru in the way he loves the sun and the sky and the ground that keeps him steady. Haru doesn’t end in that way; Makoto could travel the greatest lengths, listen to the breeze and the Earth whisper and groan with each passing season, but never would he be able to let go of what he feels for Haru. He loves Haru because there’s no other way he could feel. He will love him through sea changes and spells of separation and whatever other shifts this universe might be hiding.

And _Rin,_ loving Rin is like falling in love with life itself. Rin destroys and rebuilds and laughs like the hottest point of the sun. Rin makes Makoto want to get on planes and speak to strangers and hold Rin’s hand through everything he has to offer, through freefalling. Loving Rin is like loving life itself in the way that it grounds Makoto just as much as it sweeps him away. Rin makes him feel like he could find his footing in thin air.

“It’s the water for him anyway,” Rin says, grinning. Makoto jumps at the sound of his voice, takes a moment to register that he is referring to Haru and then grins right back.

“Well, they’re a pretty couple, at least.”

Rin laughs and just as always, Makoto cannot help but join him. When the laughter subsides there’s a haze that comes in its wake and it occurs to Makoto just how surreal this entire conversation has been.

~ 

 

“Hey, Makoto?”

“Yes?”

Rin leans an elbow on the counter beside him, his hand coming to rest against his chin. The battered chair he’s seated on has become something of a fixture in the shop since his visits started to become both more frequent and notably lengthier, always coinciding with Makoto's shifts. When he thinks on that he feels his cheeks warm, so instead he touches his fingertip to the drooping leaf of a potted lily to his right. He imagines the gesture to be as close to a handshake as one might manage for a plant.

“Rin?” Makoto turns towards him this time, a piece of dark green floral tape hangs from his index finger and Rin can’t quite explain the urge he feels to tug it off.

He gulps. “S’nothing. Just a question I thought of.”

Makoto smiles at him, amused already. “You gonna ask?”

Rin trains his eyes on Makoto’s fingers, wonders why the prospect of asking something so innocent has his toes tapping nervously in his shoes. He has to do it though. It’s been bothering him for ages; ever since the conversation they’d had about confessions when Makoto had told him that the flower would depend on the person.

When Rin clarified that he didn’t have feelings for Haru, for a fraction of a second, he’d thought he’d seen relief warm Makoto’s face. That moment could make a total fool out of him with how helplessly he's hanging by it, that micro-expression.

“Uh, I was just wondering if maybe you like…if maybe there were certain people you associated with specific flowers?” He worries it’s a weird question as soon as it’s out his mouth

But his embarrassment cools swiftly in the face of the easy blush spreading over Makoto’s cheeks, the nervous hand he lifts to rub at the back of his neck. A sheepish laugh breezes past his mouth and Rin is a little transfixed; at least ten times more curious than before.

“You're gonna find this so silly,” Makoto says, with a hint of trepidation.

“No, I won't. I asked, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, well. Rin, you’re kind of silly,” Makoto tells him, grinning now.

Rin swallows thickly; he can’t say he disagrees when he’s here thinking that ‘butterflies’ is too weak a description for his jitters. It’s really more like Nagisa on a jumping castle, except, horrifyingly, in his stomach. 

And the way Makoto is still smiling is dangerous for how badly it makes Rin want to drag him outside to catch the last light of the day together; watch it sink into Makoto’s hair before it falls away to rest under the Iwatobi night. And as sappy as that is alone, Rin still has room for the fleeting question of what colour gold might cast over green, what it might taste like to kiss the dying sunshine against Makoto’s lips.

Rin coughs. “Oi, you’re silly.”

Makoto shoves him lightly at that. Rin watches him measure a ribbon to match the length of his forearm, before reaching for the scissors and cutting it easily. Part of it falls to the floor and Makoto bends to pick it up. He straightens and sighs before setting both ends of the ribbon down and looking at Rin.

“Okay, fine. Fine, if it's all silly...who exactly do you have in mind?”

Of course, Rin’s own name is the first one that comes to mind, but he refuses to ask just yet; doesn’t want to come off as too eager. ‘Nagisa?”  
  
“Oh, easy. Daffodils.”

Rin contemplates for a second, before agreeing. “Yeah, I can see it. It’s the yellow, right?”

“Exactly! But also the um—“ Makoto gestures wildly with his hands. “The whole trumpet look.”

Rin nods at that; how is it that the word ‘ _trumpet’_ alone seems to scream Nagisa? He has to bite back his smile when Makoto continues on his own accord.

“Haru is…magnolia, I like magnolia for him. And Rei is—”

“Iris,” Rin says.

Makoto chuckles. “Of course.”

“And uh, and me?”

“Dahlia. That’s what reminds me of you.” Makoto’s voice comes in a warm hush, the green of his irises melting into something painfully gentle as his eyes crinkle around the corners. For a second, Rin forgets to breathe. When he remembers, his chest flutters wildly, before his heartbeat seems to kick start into something sharper and faster; multiplied at his ears, throat, wrist. Of course, he knows he brought it on himself but he can’t figure out if it’s a fair price to pay when he’s caught somewhere between giddiness and the most intense urge to groan aloud.

He could press Makoto up against the counter right now; the prospect feels so painfully appropriate that it burns hot and bright in Rin’s chest. He’d keep Makoto there and kiss him slow and sweet, draw the breath from Makoto’s lungs so he knows exactly what this always feels like for Rin.

 

~ 

Rin takes to visiting when Makoto’s shifts are almost over and Makoto takes to walking Rin back to the train station every time. The cherry blossoms make him nostalgic; draw a natural ease between the two while also reminding Makoto how much they have grown up.

Today, Rin catches a petal before it hits the ground and drops it in Makoto’s hand.

When Rin speaks, Makoto gathers that he is being invited to understand.

“I missed this when I was in Australia — all the cherry trees.”  
  
Makoto slows slightly, his heart heavy as he lets the petal shift in his palm. “What else did you miss?” he asks. It’s not like him to push but he wants to understand, remembers feeling like he was going to fall apart in the hallway of his childhood swim club, of watching Rin fall apart later, and he figures he might deserve to know.

Rin gives him a half-smile, and it’s just as sad as it is grateful. “So much. I missed the salt in the breeze and the mountains and the _language_ – the language, that was real tough – all the things that I never even spared a thought for while I was here.” He reaches to tuck his hair behind his ears, shy as he continues. “I missed all of you as well. At the beginning I had to work to move on from you guys because it made everything in Australia just…kind of suck tenfold. But then the thought of everyone here was calming; you know it didn’t even occur to me that you’d all be growing up or you might be different to how I’d known you and I’d imagine coming back all huge and amazing and just how you guys would react.” He lets out a small, strained laugh now.

Makoto wants to hold Rin’s hand. He’s scared to hear what comes next but his chest is tight with the need to know, nonetheless.

When Rin continues, his voice is soft, his words slow and measured and delivered with such deliberateness. “That used to keep me going. Except I missed you all so much and too often, it just felt like I had no one in Australia and I kept fucking up so it felt like everything, _everything_ that I was, all that I missed here — Haru and the rest of you and the trophies, just feeling anything…having a heart. It all felt like it was holding me back. I seriously, genuinely resented it all so much and that was one of the scariest parts.” When he finishes, he breathes out slow and deep, and fixes Makoto with a rueful smile.

Makoto is silent for a while. He is so conflicted between wanting to mourn the years Rin lost to his adrift faith in himself, and being grateful that Rin speaks now in past tense; that he stands next to Makoto having survived. “I wish you’d never felt that way,” he says with a conviction he thinks might rival Rin’s.

“Yeah well, it makes it all the more important to be here now. I’m not gonna fuck it up.”

Rin’s smile is real now, the determined one that makes Makoto breathe easier.

It occurs to Makoto that the boy beside him is so much more optimistic than what other people realise.

“Yeah,” Makoto agrees. “You’re not. We’re not going to let you either.”

 

~

  
“Rin?" 

Rin looks up from Makoto’s English textbook to find Makoto swiveling from side to side in his desk chair. He kind of wants to berate Makoto for not concentrating on the task at hand but he’s chewing on his bottom lip in the way that suggests there’s something pressing on his mind.

“What is it?” Rin asks, raising an eyebrow.

Makoto shakes his head. “Ah never mind, it’s really nothing.”

Rin groans. He _hates_ it when people do that. It has to be something if it occurred to them in the first place. “Tell me,” he grunts.

Makoto wrings his hands in his lap. “I’ve just been wondering, um, remember you asked me what flowers would be best to confess to someone with? And I just wanted to know…did you ever figure out which ones to pick?”

That catches Rin off guard. He takes a moment and when he feels his gut twist he knows that it’s now or never and if it’s never his heart won’t forgive him so he might as well make a split second decision and try for now. So he listens to the world creeping into his ears and hopes, hopes to hope itself, that he will be able to grasp this.

He takes a deep breath and then he braces himself. “Nerdflower. Of the genus nerd.”

"Oh..." Makoto’s eyes go so wide they could rival the round heart of the sunflower on his windowsill. His chair creaks to a complete stop and he is silent, silent until he’s not because he’s laughing and Rin’s never heard a sound so delighted in his life.

Rin doesn’t know what to do with how his chest is seizing so tight it feels like he’s staring at the drop from a point of suspension.

“Personally,” Makoto says and he kind of looks like he’s about to cry, “Personally, I think that would beat a rose any day.”

And oh _,_ Rin _drops_. “Holy shit,” he says. Then he says it once more before he’s laughing with Makoto, the bed groaning as his weight lifts clean off of it so he can cross the distance and lay a trembling hand to Makoto’s shoulder. “Are you saying…you better be sayi—“

“I’m sorry, I didn't bring dahlias.”

Rin’s eyes are watering and he feels like he’s got all the strength in the universe simmering under his skin as he all but yanks Makoto out of his chair. They crash into each other so messily it knocks the wind out of them both and all Rin can do is clutch at Makoto, bury his smile in the clean cotton of Makoto’s shirt.

When Rin pulls away slightly, arms still around Makoto’s shoulders, it is to see Makoto blushing like a sunset; the brightest smile on his face. Rin decides he’s going to keep it there, and his own cheeks hurt from grinning so hard at the thought. 

“This is so surreal,” Makoto says.

“Awesome. This is awesome,” Rin corrects. He really wants to kiss the point where Makoto’s eyebrows slant up in disbelief.

 

~

  
Rin had told Makoto to tell him if there was ever anything he wanted. Makoto remembers that now, gulping as he figures out how exactly to word this. 

“There’s one thing I’d really like right now,” he tries. A solid start.

Rin smiles, nodding for him to continue, fortifying. And it's magic how it makes Makoto feel more anticipation than fear.

So It takes him a moment but he gets there. Plants have been something of a good luck charm for them, after all. “Mistletoe…y-you know Westerners have this traditi—“

“Oh my _God._ I know what mistletoe means,” Rin says. There’s a beat of silence and then he coughs slightly, his cheeks red. “I'd like—I mean...you can um go…yeah, go for it.”

Makoto thanks him, because that’s the polite thing to do, takes a measured breath and then plants both his hands on Rin’s shoulders. When he brushes his lips against Rin’s it is a chaste breeze of a kiss.

When he pulls away, he's beaming, he can feel it, heart so full it’s ready to spill. Rin blinks once, twice, in something like wonder, the same wonder Makoto feels being this close to him. And then one corner of Rin's mouth pulls up, like he knows something at a level higher than the rest of the world, and Makoto never gets to ask because in an instant, he's being dragged down, he's kissing Rin properly. And then there's really nothing that matters enough to know.

When Makoto gasps, Rin only slides his fingers into his hair to bring him closer. Makoto’s lips quirk at the feeling and Rin presses into him hard enough that he can’t tell if the ground is spinning or if it’s just his head. Maybe it’s both, it’d certainly be possible with Rin.

This time, when they pull apart, Makoto is dizzy, breathless. Rin reaches up to cup his cheek in his hand and Makoto wonders how Rin's fingers can tremble when he’s just managed to make him feel like his bones are quaking. He leans into the touch, almost leans in to kiss the soft smile tugging at Rin’s lips.

“You’re a fucking bouquet, Makoto. Fuck if I know the names but you’re every single flower imaginable.”

Makoto can’t help but believe it.

He thinks of Rin staring at that sleeping cherry tee. And then he thinks of nicking his fingers on thorns and feeling nothing but respect in the face of proud tiger lilies. He thinks of counting the petals of a dahlia, how they’re sharp and full and always _reaching_ while still being silk to the touch. And there’s nothing he can do except for believe the words.

After all, Rin has never failed to make Makoto see truth in romance.


End file.
